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North Korea says it will put 2 Americans on trial for 'hostile acts'

Written By kolimtiga on Senin, 30 Juni 2014 | 16.38

North Korea will put two Americans on trial for "hostile acts," the nation announced Monday through its official news agency.

The Korean Central News Agency reported that Jeffrey Fowle and Matthew Miller would be tried for "perpetrating hostile acts after entering the territory of the DPRK," North Korea's formal name.

The news agency did not specify the alleged hostile acts, nor did it say when the trial would begin.

Monday's report said suspicions about the two men's crimes have been confirmed though investigation and testimony.

Fowle, 56, was taken into custody this month after traveling to North Korea on a tourist visa. At the time of his arrest, authorities did not specify what crimes he was suspected of committing.

Diplomatic sources told the Associated Press that Fowle, of Ohio, had been detained for leaving a Bible in his hotel room. But a spokesman for Fowle's family said he was not on a mission for his church. His wife and three children said in a statement after his arrest that they miss him very much and "are anxious for his return home."

North Korea detained Miller, 24, in April, saying he had torn up his tourist visa and expressed his intention to seek asylum in the secretive country. Miller intended to use the nation "as a shelter," the government in Pyongyang said.

The U.S. State Department updated its travel warning about going to North Korea in May. It is not illegal for Americans to travel there, but the U.S. has no direct diplomatic relations with the country. The Swedish Embassy provides limited consular services to U.S. citizens there.

It was not immediately clear whether Swedish diplomats had been in contact with Fowle or Miller since their detentions.

In its May advisory, the State Department said it "strongly recommends against all travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea," noting that such trips are "not routine" and that American tourists have been subject to arbitrary arrest and long-term detention.

"Do not assume that joining a group tour or use of a tour guide will prevent your arrest or detention by North Korean authorities," the bulletin said.

North Korea is also holding Kenneth Bae, a Korean American missionary who was detained in November 2012. He was sentenced in April 2013 to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts."

Borowiec is a special correspondent.

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Obama's bid to deport children complicates immigration reform effort

President Obama's surprise request that Congress give him authority to quickly deport thousands of Central American children illegally crossing the border is likely to renew the on-again, off-again immigration reform debate that many Republicans had hoped to avoid.

The administration is asking Congress to approve $2 billion in emergency funding for beefed-up border security and assistance, as the children — many traveling without their parents under the mistaken impression that they will be allowed to stay — slip across the Southwest border. Amid a growing humanitarian crisis, many of the children are being sent as far away as California and Oklahoma for processing and shelter.

The request, expected to be formally made Monday, seems intended to blunt criticism that White House immigration policies have inadvertently encouraged the crush of youngsters.

But the proposal presents lawmakers with an unpleasant vote on whether to deport children, something the U.S. has historically resisted. It also would undo part of a bipartisan 2008 law passed under President George W. Bush that mandated certain protections for minors fleeing violence and poverty in Central American countries and other nations.

Some conservative lawmakers may decide, particularly in an election year, that deporting the children is an appropriate response that would send a hard-line message against illegal immigration.

But for many others, particularly Democrats and Republicans representing areas with large immigrant populations, the prospect of such a heart-wrenching vote could fuel arguments that the time has come for broader immigration reform.

"It's pretty sad if the one thing they pass this year is deporting a bunch of kids — not just deporting, but permanently rolling back due process," said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights and justice at the immigration advocacy group Women's Refugee Commission.

Democratic aides said Sunday that the president's proposal would provide an opportunity to reopen the legislative debate. But passage of an immigration overhaul remains a long shot, given deep resistance from the Republican-led House; many consider the bipartisan reform package that passed the Senate last year all but dead.

Once lawmakers return from their weeklong Independence Day break, the White House intends to ask Congress to move quickly to address its latest border request, which it views as an "aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers," a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly said Sunday on condition of anonymity.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry will meet with the leaders of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala on the sidelines of the Panamanian president's inauguration to reinforce items agreed to during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the Central American countries earlier this month, the official said.

Authorities have apprehended more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors at the Southwest border so far this fiscal year — about double the number from a comparable period in the last fiscal year. Many are fleeing violence at home, or reacting to false rumors that children and families will be given permission to stay.

Although no program grants residency to such migrants, in a strange way, the rumor has become somewhat true. After 72 hours, the Department of Homeland Security must transfer detained children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is required to "act in the best interest of the child." That often means reuniting the child with a parent or relative living in the U.S. With the massive backlog in immigration courts, migrants can spend years in the U.S. before their cases are heard.

As the number of immigrants grows, U.S. lawmakers have reacted with a mix of partisan fervor against the administration's policies and, at times, exasperation over what to do next.

"I think, you know, we have to be humanitarian, but at the same time let them know that if they do come, they cannot stay here," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Otherwise, we'll never stop the flow."

Democrats who have pushed for the Republican-controlled House to take up an immigration measure after the Senate approved its bipartisan bill a year ago said the border crisis only amplified the need for Congress to act.

"We never give up," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said during a weekend trip to the border in south Texas. "There's still the month of July and, again, public sentiment is everything."

The $2 billion in emergency border funding to detain and process arrivals specifically in the Rio Grande Valley along the Southwest border will probably appeal to all but the most conservative deficit hawks in Congress, who tend to oppose any new spending. An administration official said Sunday that the amount requested was likely to rise.

But the administration's proposal to undo part of the 2008 law that provided specific protections for minors from countries with noncontiguous borders — all but Mexico and Canada — has already raised alarms, especially from the president's Democratic allies.

Under current law, children from Central American countries are afforded an immigration or asylum hearing, a process that smugglers, or coyotes, portray to immigrants as a permiso — permission to remain in the U.S.

The change sought by the administration means the children would no longer get that hearing. Instead, they would have just one opportunity to make their case to immigration officials as soon as they were detained.

"This is what's shocking about what this administration is asking for," Brané said. "Even under the Bush administration, before the law was codified, it was [accepted] that children shouldn't be put through that process. The idea was if you're going to put a kid on a plane, you need to think about that a little more."

Immigration activists said the White House's sudden strategy was little more than a quick fix to deeper problems that have been exacerbated by Congress' failure to act. It could also fuel the disenchantment of some activists who have dubbed Obama the "deporter in chief" in an effort to goad him into relaxing deportations by executive order.

Republicans say the rise in new arrivals shows the president's executive actions have become a magnet for immigrants. They point to his 2012 decision to give young adults who arrived illegally as children temporary permission to stay in the country as long as they are enrolled in school or have served in the military.

Others, though, say the broken system has left immigrants little choice but to take their chances with illegal entry if they ever hope to reunite with family members already in the U.S. or escape the poverty or wartime conditions in their own countries. The waiting list for legal entry can stretch for decades.

"It is incredible we're reacting from crisis to crisis instead of solving the problem," said Alfonso Aguilar, a Republican strategist who supports immigration reform and blames both parties for failing to pass legislation. "It is sad if they could reach an agreement on [Obama's latest request] but not anything else."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

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Vote fuels Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement

Nearly 800,000 people voted in a non-binding Hong Kong referendum aimed at agitating for greater democracy, organizers said early Monday, and the semi-autonomous Chinese city was bracing for hundreds of thousands of people to march through the streets Tuesday to continue pressing their cause.

The 10-day vote in the former British territory -- conducted online, via mobile phones and in person -- asked residents to cast ballots for one of three mechanisms for directly electing the city's chief executive in 2017. About 787,000 people – more than 10% of the city's population – participated. Mainland authorities have denounced the balloting as illegal.

Under the "One Country, Two Systems" framework governing the city's return to Chinese rule in 1997, direct voting for the chief executive is to begin in 2017. Rules for the election have not been hammered out yet between Hong Kong officials and mainland authorities, but organizers of the referendum fear that the guidelines for the vote will be written so as to allow leaders in Beijing to screen out any potentially objectionable candidates.

All three proposals on the ballot called for some means of allowing Hong Kong residents to directly nominate candidates for the city's top job. In addition, voters were asked whether the local legislature should veto any proposal that "cannot satisfy international standards allowing genuine choices by electors." More than 87% of voters said yes.

Since 1997, protest rallies have been held annually on July 1 in Hong Kong. Generally pro-democratic in nature, their emphasis has shifted from year to year. In 2003, an estimated half-million Hong Kongers turned out to march after proposed anti-subversion legislation sparked heated debate among locals. After the massive turnout, the proposal was shelved indefinitely. Last year's July 1 rally attracted about 93,000 participants, accordion to estimates from the University of Hong Kong's Public Opinion Program.

This month's 10-day referendum, organized by a group called Occupy Central with Peace and Love, has sparked fierce denunciations from Beijing authorities as well as from some business groups in Hong Kong. The voting website came under fierce cyber-attacks and media outlets that expressed support for the vote experienced similar assaults.

Occupy Central leaders have proposed staging sit-ins and other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience at some unspecified date in the future in Hong Kong's main financial district if the election rules fall short of what they call "international standards."

Some businesses have expressed alarm at the possibility that the city's financial hub could be paralyzed by such a protest. Last week, the local offices of the so-called "big four" accounting firms took out ads in Hong Kong newspapers, saying they were concerned that Occupy Central "would have a negative and long-lasting impact on the rule of law, the society, and the economy of Hong Kong. We hope that the disagreements could be resolved through negotiation and dialogue instead." On Monday, some employees of the companies took out advertisements of their own, saying they disagreed with their bosses' ads.

Although Occupy Central leaders have not designated any particular time yet for a civil disobedience campaign, concern is growing that some supporters of the movement are preparing to launch such activities imminently.

On Monday, local broadcaster RTHK reported that two student groups that have been active in the Occupy Central referendum planned to stage overnight "rehearsal" sit-ins from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning to put pressure on authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong to accept the results of the 10-day vote.

"We believe we need a more progressive act to push the government to recognize our voice and our suggestion, and only through an act of civil disobedience could really propel or change the mind of the government," secretary-general of the Federation of Students, Alex Chow, told RTHK.

For China news, follow @JulieMakLAT on Twitter

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Ed O'Bannon-led antitrust suit against NCAA concludes

Written By kolimtiga on Sabtu, 28 Juni 2014 | 16.38

The landmark antitrust trial against the NCAA came to a close Friday after 15 days of testimony, with both sides expressing confidence that the outcome will tilt in their favor and lead plaintiff Ed O'Bannon calling it "amazing" that student-athletes were at last able to lay out their concerns in a federal courtroom.

"These are huge steps, for the athlete, for the student, for all of us," said O'Bannon, the former UCLA basketball star who heads up the class action on behalf of current and former student-athletes in Division I men's basketball and football.

------------
FOR THE RECORD
An earlier version of this story misidentified Donald Remy as the NCAA's lead counsel. He is the its chief legal officer.
------------

The suit seeks an injunction that would end the 108-year-old NCAA's prohibition on the ability of student-athletes to license their names, images and likenesses for broadcast, rebroadcast, video games and more.

Asked what he found most surprising, O'Bannon replied: "The fact that we finished, that we didn't get thrown out, that it wasn't something where Judge [Claudia] Wilken said, 'You're crazy to want this.'"

Plaintiffs, who filed the case a little over five years ago, allege the NCAA violates antitrust law by colluding with its member colleges and conferences in a scheme that amounts to price-fixing and refusal to deal. The NCAA counters that it is a collaborative joint venture that has made rules in the interest of collegiate sports, thereby maintaining core values key to its fan base of amateurism and an integrated experience of academics and athletics.

NCAA President Mark Emmert was among the witnesses who described in nostalgic terms the value of amateurism and the damage the NCAA believes is certain to result if student-athletes are compensated beyond the cost of education. (Compensation is now capped at tuition, room and board and books.)

Others included three former student-athletes, economists produced by both sides, experts on the increasingly lucrative broadcast contracts that plaintiffs believe student-athletes should share in, and a host of college and conference officials.

At the end of the day, the case will come down to the intricacies of antitrust law, and Wilken, a U.S. district judge, on Friday spent 3 1/2 hours questioning attorneys about the thicket of issues she must tease through. Among them: who are the sellers and who the buyers, what is the anti-competitive injury suffered, and what markets are affected.

Furthermore, the NCAA has put forth in its defense a list of so-called "pro-competitive benefits" that the restrictions on compensation foster. They must prove, for example, that the ban on student-athletes' sharing in name, image and likeness proceeds from licensing deals fosters amateurism, integration of student-athletes into academic life, and "competitive balance" — the attempt to ensure that some schools don't have a wildly unfair advantage over others, thereby recruiting all the talent and leading to uneven competition that would be dull for fans.

Lastly, plaintiffs must show that less restrictive alternatives to the compensation ban would reduce purported harm to student-athletes while still preserving any pro-competitive benefits that are shown to exist.

Wilken on Friday circled back repeatedly to certain questions as she tried to ascertain what market was being affected — the college education market or the broadcast licensing market. In the case of the latter, NCAA lead counsel Glenn Pomerantz told Wilken, plaintiffs would have to prove that the broadcast market was suppressed, while in fact it has boomed.

Plaintiffs' attorney Michael Hausfeld countered that the logic was "circuitous. It says, 'There are a number of broadcasts that include your name . . . so therefore you can't show that there's an effect on output because I've already taken your name.'"

Wilken has called for the parties to file closing briefs by July 10 and probably will rule by mid-August. Whatever she decides, the matter is likely to be appealed.

She telegraphed potential leanings Friday while discussing "less restrictive alternatives" to the blanket ban on name, image and likeness compensation, noting that some could become part of an injunction.

Among the possibilities she listed: allowing colleges to put student-athlete NIL revenue toward a total cost of education, which would potentially include longer-term scholarships that would allow former athletes to return and complete their education; equitably-shared group broadcast licensing revenues; revenues held in trust until athletes are no longer eligible to play; and a system that would call for revenue sharing among student-athletes across colleges, to ensure that competitive balance was not unduly altered and that less wealthy "loser" schools also benefited.

Outside court, NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy said that after 15 long court days he believes "we're way ahead."

"The plaintiffs have still not been able to articulate an antitrust theory," he said. "It's a challenge — because it isn't there. . . . I feel comfortable and confident that the NCAA has put forth a case that sustains the benefits of a collegiate model — today, yesterday and tomorrow."

Mark Lewis, NCAA executive vice president for championships and alliances, who took the stand Friday morning and acknowledged that the NCAA changes slowly and has failed to make enough positive changes for student-athletes, conceding: "We want to do better. But that's different than violating the law."

Hausfeld, meanwhile, said change is coming one way or another.

"I don't think anyone questions that there's going to be a new world of college sports," he said, noting that it could come from a court order or from within the NCAA. "Something within this structure has got to give."

11:21 p.m.: Corrected Donald Remy's title from NCAA lead counsel to NCAA chief legal officer.

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Ed O'Bannon-led antitrust suit against NCAA concludes

------------
FOR THE RECORD
An earlier version of this story misidentified Donald Remy as the NCAA's lead counsel. He is the its chief legal officer.
------------

Wilken has called for the parties to file closing briefs by July 10 and probably will rule by mid-August. Whatever she decides, the matter is likely to be appealed.

Outside court, NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy said that after 15 long court days he believes "we're way ahead."

Hausfeld, meanwhile, said change is coming one way or another.

11:21 p.m.: Corrected Donald Remy's title from NCAA lead counsel to NCAA chief legal officer.

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Restaurant review: At Night + Market Song, just eat, don't ask

If you want to understand Night + Market Song, Kris Yenbamroong's new Thai restaurant in Silver Lake, you could do worse than to look at the luu suk, a puddle of warm pig blood, strewn with feathery Southeast Asian herbs, served in a shallow bowl. The herbs are fragrant, pungent and fresh; the bowl is made of tin, of a sort you may associate with Asian street food but that you can also purchase at Ikea. There are crunchy pork rinds, like Thai chicharrones, a scattering of toasted noodles and a tiny dish of sweet, honey-colored "MSG sauce" — the only MSG you will find anywhere in the restaurant, Yenbamroong claims.

To eat the luu suk, you mix the herbs into the soup, scatter the pork rinds over the top and scoop up the mixture with balls of sticky rice. It is actually fairly mild in taste, much less intimidating in flavor than it is in appearance, although your napkin will soon begin to resemble the aftermath of a knife fight. Luu suk can be a gruesome prospect even for the most jaded eaters among us. I have been eating with Ruth Reichl for more than 25 years, and this is the one dish I have ever seen her refuse to touch.

Is it authentic? Undoubtedly, although I have not tried the original. But the question remains: Whom is the dish meant to please?

The clientele at Night + Market Song is overwhelmingly non-Thai, and very few of them are likely to have grown up with a taste for blood soup. The flavors are pleasant but not especially vivid, at least compared with the intensely herbal catfish "tamales" baked in banana leaves, the red-hot jungle curry or the marbles of fermented Isaan sausage. Even in northern Thailand, Yenbamroong admits, this blood soup is rare; late-night sustenance for drunkards and gamblers. The expat hunger for a Hollywood version probably doesn't exist.

So is luu suk on the menu because the chef thinks his customers, appetites whetted at nose-to-tail restaurants like Animal and the original West Hollywood Night + Market, will love it? Is it a dish that exists to be Instagrammed? Does it enhance foodie street cred when you dine in a restaurant that serves warm pig blood, even if you personally wouldn't touch the stuff? Are you also happy to know that you could get an unbelievably stinky old-hen soup with shrimp paste in the style of Chieng Rai if you wanted it, or strong-tasting fried meatballs made with pork liver and blood, or bitter hand-chopped beef larb enhanced with raw liver and a bit of cow bile?

There are a lot of questions here. And you can bet that Yenbamroong, whose degree comes from New York University's film school and not from of a culinary academy, has thought his aesthetic of culinary transgression through. I like it a lot.

Night + Market Song may be the sparest restaurant in a neighborhood not known for luxury: an entry hall lined with chairs, a small counter that may turn into a bar when the alcohol license comes through, and a long, bare room, painted Mets orange, with a Cindy Crawford poster on the wall. The place looks like the rec room in a Downey apartment complex, needing only a half-broken pingpong table to complete its verisimilitude. There is a Michael Jackson shrine in the men's room and a parade banner in the hall. This is Thai restaurant as experimental theater.

You will find a few of the cheerful dishes that make the original Night + Market so fun — the delicious, fatty bits of grilled pig neck that Yenbamroong calls pork "toro," the sweet grilled chicken wings, the Chiang Mai-style khao soi noodles in a curried coconut broth with chicken and the crab fried rice. There is a kind of Bloomin' Onion version of papaya salad, with the shredded green papaya battered and fried instead of pounded, and served with the citrus and chiles in a bowl on the side.

The chef is liberal in his use of dried fish, bitter Thai herbs and all sorts of chiles, but it is possible, if only barely, to have an unchallenging dinner here. The pad Thai is hotter, more tamarind-forward than you may be used to, but it is still recognizably pad Thai. Slabs of pork shoulder marinated in condensed milk before hitting the grill come out sweet and moist, just blackened at the edges. The crisped rice salad, nam khao tod, is quite spicy, but the balance of tart lime juice and smoky chile, herbal sharpness and a hit of porkiness from the house-cured "Spam" is pretty hard to resist, as is the traditional grilled pork salad called "startled pig."

But you are basically going to approach the restaurant on Yenbamroong's terms, whether you know it going in or not. The crunchy, garlicky fried chicken thighs, perhaps the most accessible thing on the menu, are served with a fragrant, spicy northern Thai condiment made with roasted green chiles ... and steamed water bugs, which in this context taste more like an exotic herb than they do like insects. (You wouldn't know there were bugs in the sauce unless somebody told you.)

Instead of the user-friendly pad kee mao, fried rice noodles, at the Sunset Strip restaurant, there is something the chef calls "Bangkok mall pasta," an aggressively spicy dish of spaghetti stir-fried with toasted garlic, smelly chunks of dried fish and baby peppercorns still on the branch — the Thai equivalent of Italian aglio e olio and just as likely to haunt your breath for the better part of a week.

The most subversive dish on the menu may also be the most innocuous, a plate of rice fried with ketchup, frozen peas and carrots, the kind you used to get in your Swanson dinners when you were a kid, a handful of raisins and wiener blossoms — hot dogs cut so that they spread into pink, meaty flowers as they cook. Yenbamroong says that this is what you get with your drinks at strip clubs in Thailand. And it is too bad that the restaurant closes at 11, because khao pad American is exactly what you crave at 3 a.m.

jonathan.gold@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @thejgold

Night + Market Song

Authentic Thai or art project (or both), it's delicious.

LOCATION

3322 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake, (323) 665-5899, nightmarketla.com

PRICES

Snacks, $7-$12; dips, $9-$10; soups and curries, $9-$15; salads, $9-$12; noodles, $9-$14.

DETAILS

Dinner 5 to 10:30 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 5 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Credit cards accepted. No alcohol. Difficult street parking only. No reservations. Takeout.

RECOMMENDED DISHES

Pork "toro," nam prik ong, Burmese vegan curry, crispy rice salad, catfish larb, startled pig.

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Angels' Albert Pujols remains focused and gets results

Written By kolimtiga on Jumat, 27 Juni 2014 | 16.39

The word "slump" exists for Albert Pujols, and the Angels slugger will occasionally drop it into conversation, but that doesn't mean he puts much stock into it.

"I don't believe in slumps," Pujols said. "I think that's something people have created to try to mess with people's minds. Sometimes, the hits don't fall. You can go 0 for 30 and hit bullets and they don't find spots. When I go through these things, I hold onto the positive and don't carry the negative."

Pujols went on a tear for the first 32 games of the season, hitting .302 with 10 home runs and 26 runs batted in. Then, for whatever reason — call it a slump, a funk, a run of rotten luck — the hits did not fall much when Pujols hit .185 with five homers and nine RBIs in 31 games from May 7-June 10.

Pujols' focus never wavered. Nor did his work in the batting cage, which has become legendary. Most of all, Pujols remained upbeat, mentally strong.

"This game is about catching breaks, and most of the time, you don't get breaks," Pujols said. "You train your mind. If you concentrate on things you're struggling with, you put more pressure on yourself. I try to focus on how I'm feeling at the plate and not worry so much about the results."

Though he's not mashing the ball like he did in April, Pujols is getting results. He had a double and two singles, two RBIs and scored twice Thursday to back the superb pitching of Jered Weaver in a 6-4 victory over the Minnesota Twins at Angel Stadium.

The three-game sweep of the Twins extended the Angels' win streak to six, pushed their record (44-33) to a season-high 11 games over .500 and completed the first undefeated homestand of six games or more since May 2004.

The Angels have won 12 of 13 home games, they have the second-best record in the American League and are 3 1/2 games behind Oakland in the American League West.

"We're absolutely starting to do some of the things we know we're capable of on offense," said Manager Mike Scioscia. "We have to keep it rolling."

Mike Trout has done the heavy lifting on offense — the center fielder had a pair of doubles, two RBIs and scored twice Thursday and is hitting .387 (41 for 106) with nine homers, 30 RBIs and 24 runs in his last 29 games.

But Pujols has also been a force, batting .347 (17 for 49) with one homer and 11 RBIs in his last 12 games. All three of his hits Thursday came with runners in scoring position, raising his average to .189 (17 for 90) in those situations. He was a career .344 hitter with runners in scoring position entering the season.

"When he's swinging it well, Albert is going to hit the ball hard whether there are runners in scoring position or no one on base," Scioscia said. "When he was struggling at the plate, he happened to have some guys in scoring position and wasn't getting hits to fall.

"But it was a good afternoon for him today. He really used the whole field. He set the tone and got some big hits. Hopefully, he's showing a little more of a comfort level in the batter's box."

Pujols hit an RBI single to left field in a two-run first inning, an RBI double to right in a two-run third and a single to right in a two-run seventh.

When the Twins didn't hold him on in the first inning, Pujols stole second. But he got a little too frisky on the bases in the seventh and was thrown out at second trying to tag on Trout's fly ball to left.

Pujols preferred to focus on the team, and not himself, after the game.

"This is not about me, man, it's about our ballclub and helping this organization win," he said. "It takes 25 guys to win a championship, and my goal is to do whatever it takes to help this club win, whether it's with my bat, my glove, if I can steal a bag here or there. That's my goal."

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Angels' Albert Pujols remains focused and gets results

The word "slump" exists for Albert Pujols, and the Angels slugger will occasionally drop it into conversation, but that doesn't mean he puts much stock into it.

Pujols' focus never wavered. Nor did his work in the batting cage, which has become legendary. Most of all, Pujols remained upbeat, mentally strong.

The Angels have won 12 of 13 home games, they have the second-best record in the American League and are 3 1/2 games behind Oakland in the American League West.

"We're absolutely starting to do some of the things we know we're capable of on offense," said Manager Mike Scioscia. "We have to keep it rolling."

"But it was a good afternoon for him today. He really used the whole field. He set the tone and got some big hits. Hopefully, he's showing a little more of a comfort level in the batter's box."

Pujols hit an RBI single to left field in a two-run first inning, an RBI double to right in a two-run third and a single to right in a two-run seventh.

Pujols preferred to focus on the team, and not himself, after the game.

16.38 | 0 komentar | Read More

Angels' Albert Pujols remains focused and gets results

The word "slump" exists for Albert Pujols, and the Angels slugger will occasionally drop it into conversation, but that doesn't mean he puts much stock into it.

Pujols' focus never wavered. Nor did his work in the batting cage, which has become legendary. Most of all, Pujols remained upbeat, mentally strong.

The Angels have won 12 of 13 home games, they have the second-best record in the American League and are 3 1/2 games behind Oakland in the American League West.

"We're absolutely starting to do some of the things we know we're capable of on offense," said Manager Mike Scioscia. "We have to keep it rolling."

"But it was a good afternoon for him today. He really used the whole field. He set the tone and got some big hits. Hopefully, he's showing a little more of a comfort level in the batter's box."

Pujols hit an RBI single to left field in a two-run first inning, an RBI double to right in a two-run third and a single to right in a two-run seventh.

Pujols preferred to focus on the team, and not himself, after the game.

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Grant Green's latest work station with Angels is third base

Written By kolimtiga on Kamis, 26 Juni 2014 | 16.38

Grant Green glanced at the lineup card on his way into the Angels clubhouse Wednesday and saw he'd be making his first big league start at third base. There were no double-takes, no raised eyebrows.

"Another day," Green said, "another position."

A middle infielder by trade, Green has started 15 games this season in left field, a position he never played in the big leagues before but one he has become proficient at.

When Albert Pujols was pulled from Friday night's game because of lower-back spasms, Green played four innings at first base, a position he played in the minor leagues only five times in five years.

So third base wasn't about to faze Green, the former USC standout who was drafted by Oakland in 2009 as a shortstop and also played second base and center field in the A's system.

"I've been doing early work every day at third, and I'm comfortable there, I feel good," Green, 26, said. "It's more of a reaction position. There's not much thinking."

The keys, Green said, would be communicating with infield coach Alfredo Griffin about positioning and shortstop Erick Aybar about when off-speed pitches would be thrown.

"I want to be in the right spots, depending on the hitter, and react to wherever the pitch is thrown," Green said. "It should be good."

It was fine. Green drove in the first run in the Angels' 6-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins with a second-inning sacrifice fly and fielded three chances cleanly, not a game that will get a bucket of Gatorade dumped over your head.

But it was another in a string of solid performances that has left Green with a .324 average in 26 games and prompted many to clamor for Green to replace struggling third baseman David Freese or at least get more playing time there.

Manager Mike Scioscia said Green started Wednesday because Freese's left elbow was sore from getting hit by a pitch Tuesday and that Freese, acquired from St. Louis in the off-season, would still get "the lion's share" of starts at third base.

Since returning May 20 from a three-week stint on the disabled list because of a broken finger, Freese hasn't raised his average above .231. He is batting .226 with a .305 on-base percentage, .282 slugging percentage, two home runs, five doubles, 18 runs batted in, 59 strikeouts and 19 walks in 55 games.

The Angels don't need Freese to reprise his 2011 postseason, when he hit .444 (20 for 45) with four home runs and 16 RBIs in 12 games to win National League Championship Series and World Series most-valuable-player honors.

But the Angels did expect Freese to produce something closer to his 2012 (.293, 30 home runs, 79 RBIs) and 2013 (.262, nine home runs, 60 RBIs) seasons in St. Louis.

"I think he's hit the ball much better than some of his numbers show; he's had a lot of hard-hit outs," Scioscia said. "What David gives you is that great at-bat with guys in scoring position. We're starting to see a little bit more of that."

Those "great" at-bats haven't yielded much. Freese is hitting .170 (nine for 53) with 18 strikeouts and five walks with runners in scoring position.

"I don't think he's hit stride or a found a comfort level of what he did a couple of years ago — that hasn't materialized," Scioscia said. "But he's giving us good at-bats, and if he can get close to where we project him to be, he's going to be a huge boost to our lineup."

Green will continue to scrounge for playing time and try to accept his role as a utility man, which can be difficult for a player his age, one who aspires to be a regular.

"You're always worried about moving a guy around," Scioscia said. "But sometimes when a guy is trying to make footprints in the major leagues, this is part of the process, and Grant will do anything to get at-bats."

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Search area for Malaysia Flight 370 moves to 'likely' resting place

A new search area for remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is likely the place where the aircraft is located, Australia authorities said Wednesday night.

The new search beginning in August will cover an arc area in the Indian Ocean 60,000 square kilometers in size, said Warren Truss, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.

"This is the biggest search operation in history," he said during a media conference.

Australia authorities said they are confident the plane was on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

The search will shift south of the initial seabed zone and requires underwater mapping before any equipment is deployed due to the depth and uncharted area, Truss said.

"The new search area is most likely the place the aircraft is resting," he said.

It has been nearly four months since contact was lost with the plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, which departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport bound for Beijing.

To date, no debris has been located.

Crews have searched 860 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean so far based on calculations done according to what officials believe was the plane's final course.

Truss said the search could yield results immediately or it may be another year before any remains are located on the ocean floor.

Follow @theryanparker for breaking news

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Kevin Jepsen lets Howie Kendrick turn key double play in Angels' win

Written By kolimtiga on Rabu, 25 Juni 2014 | 16.38

The natural instinct for a pitcher on a grounder up the middle is to lunge for the ball with your glove, stop it with your foot, do anything to knock it down. Angels reliever Kevin Jepsen fought that urge in the seventh inning Tuesday night, and it led to a game-saving double play in an 8-6 victory over the Minnesota Twins.

With the Angels leading, 7-6, Jepsen allowed a double to Danny Santana and walked Brian Dozier to open the seventh. Joe Mauer followed with a firm grounder to the left of Jepsen, who pulled his glove back and let the ball go by.

"In the past, I've gone after stuff, and as soon as you nick it, you look back and Howie or [shortstop Erick] Aybar are sitting right there waiting for it," Jepsen said. "So I told myself, 'If I have time to decide whether to catch it or not, let it go,' because that means it's not hit hard enough to get through the infield."

Jepsen was right. Second baseman Howie Kendrick made a back-handed grab of the ball, stepped on the bag, leaped into the air and fired to first to complete a double play.

Josh Willingham walked, but Jepsen struck out Kendrys Morales to end the inning. Ernesto Frieri threw a one-two-three eighth, and Joe Smith added a scoreless ninth to help the Angels win for the fifth time in six games and cut Oakland's American League West lead to four games.

"Jepsen made great pitch, and you have to give him credit for letting the ball go through," said center fielder Mike Trout, who hit a two-run homer in the second. "He could have easily stopped it, and maybe we don't turn the double play. What an athletic play by Howie. That was the biggest play of the game."

Said Manager Mike Scioscia: "Howie made a terrific play. That was not an easy play, and he made it look easy."

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Kevin Jepsen lets Howie Kendrick turn key double play in Angels' win

Jepsen was right. Second baseman Howie Kendrick made a back-handed grab of the ball, stepped on the bag, leaped into the air and fired to first to complete a double play.

Said Manager Mike Scioscia: "Howie made a terrific play. That was not an easy play, and he made it look easy."

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LACMA redesign avoids tar pits, creates challenges

Architect Peter Zumthor has dramatically revised his design for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, creating a new bridge-like section of the building that would span Wilshire Boulevard.

The new design is meant to address concerns that the original plan would encroach on, and potentially damage, the La Brea Tar Pits at the neighboring Page Museum, casting a shadow over the largest pit.

Zumthor has said that the early models were always subject to revision. In any case, his updated design for the $650-million project, images of which LACMA released on Tuesday, makes clear that he took the criticism seriously.

He has significantly shrunk the footprint of the museum on the north side of Wilshire, leaving plenty of breathing room around the tar pits.

To make up for that lost space, the museum is now proposing to extend the new wing across the boulevard, where it will touch down on property owned by the museum at the southeast corner of Wilshire and Spaulding Avenue, which is now used as a parking lot.

About one-quarter of the Zumthor building's 410,000 square feet would be contained on the Spaulding site, LACMA Director Michael Govan said Tuesday.

The decision to span a major thoroughfare like Wilshire is a bold one, to be sure. Drivers would pass under the building as they drove east or west along the boulevard.

At the same time, the new location will change the character of the building in ways that Zumthor has only begun to grapple with.

Govan has already won the support of city and county officials for the modified plan. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has backed the idea of spanning Wilshire.

Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents the Miracle Mile area where the museum is located, said the new design offers a "tremendous vision" for the Museum Row section of Wilshire Boulevard. "It retains the historic beauty of the La Brea Tar Pits and at the same time crosses the boulevard in a way that will make it the center of the universe of art."

LaBonge said the Wilshire corridor will see other dramatic changes in coming years, with visitors coming to the museum via a subway station at Fairfax Avenue. "There's going to be an opportunity for people across the region to connect [to LACMA] through transit."

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes LACMA, also praised the updated design.

"It solves the tar pit problem, and it creates a unique structure in Los Angeles," he said. "It will be a magnet not only to people in Los Angeles, but to people from around the world."

Jane Pisano, director of the Natural History Museum, which runs the Page, said in a phone interview Tuesday that she was also pleased with the changes.

Yet in trying to produce a more neighborly building, Zumthor and Govan have created some architectural challenges for themselves. And it's unclear at this stage quite how they plan to surmount them.

When it was contained on the central LACMA campus — north of Wilshire and east of museum buildings by Renzo Piano — the Zumthor design, especially as seen from above, had an unusual, even singular, architectural power.

Suggesting the work of artist Jean Arp and architect Oscar Niemeyer along with the oozing shape of the tar pits, Zumthor's black blob was a muscular graphic form. It would have floated on its expansive site — newly cleared with the proposed demolition of four existing LACMA gallery buildings — like an all-black abstract painting on a wide canvas.

Shifting the building above and across Wilshire fundamentally changes this equation, this relationship between architecture and site. It makes the building foremost an urban object, part of the boulevard and the public realm. In addition, Zumthor's building will be essentially facing itself across Wilshire, creating a kind of hall-of-mirrors context. Museum-goers would be able to look down on passing traffic.

These new conditions — a building spanning one of the world's most famous boulevards instead of a museum wing on an open, landscaped site edging up to a group of tar pits — would seem to require a new architectural approach from Zumthor, or at least a significantly modified one.

The building will open more generously to a new plaza on its western edge, facing the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion. But in terms of scale and materials — in terms of its basic architectural personality — the design awaits refinement. In general it has been left misshapen, like a piece of taffy, by the decision to stretch it across Wilshire.

It is hard to think of another location where an architect has staked a claim on both sides of a major Los Angeles boulevard. Frank Gehry and the developer Related Cos. have produced designs for a new retail and residential complex across Grand Avenue from Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall. Gehry has proposed a pedestrian bridge above Grand linking the two projects, but it would have a much more modest impact than the new LACMA design. A 2012 proposal for an addition to the Los Angeles Convention Center, never built, would have straddled Pico Boulevard.

There is still plenty of time for Zumthor to rethink the cladding and scale of the building and the details of its relationship to the roadway below. He is an architect who works deliberately. And this proposal is not meant to be final by any means.

At the same time, Zumthor's great skill, what made him attractive to Govan and the LACMA board in the first place, is a rare sensitivity to site and landscape. That talent was clear to see in the original plan, with its formal nods both to the tar pits and to abstract modernism.

It is tougher to spot in the updated version, which so far seems driven far more directly by political and urban-planning concerns than architectural ones.

Govan has his ducks in a row at City Hall, and credit to him for that. Now it's time to turn back to the design details of his bid to remake the Miracle Mile.

Times staff writers Abby Sewell and David Zahniser contributed to this report.

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Latest missile defense system test is successful

Written By kolimtiga on Senin, 23 Juni 2014 | 16.38

The nation's trouble-plagued missile defense system registered a success Sunday when a ground-based interceptor fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base destroyed a mock enemy warhead high above the Pacific, military officials said.

The interception marked the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system's first success in the last four attempts, dating from December 2008.

Sunday's test carried high stakes for the system, called GMD, which was declared operational a decade ago and has so far cost about $40 billion.

A failure could have sharpened skepticism among members of Congress about the missile shield's reliability and cost. Before Sunday, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency had conducted 16 tests of the system's ability to intercept and destroy a target. Eight had ended in failure.

Sunday's outcome may ease doubts but is unlikely to dispel them entirely. The test, like all previous ones, was carefully staged: Specialists operating the system knew the target's precise dimensions, expected trajectory, speed and time of launch — information they would not have in combat conditions.

In a statement, Vice Adm. James D. Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, called the test "a very important step in our continuing efforts to improve and increase the reliability'' of GMD.

A rocket could be seen rising from Vandenberg, off the Santa Barbara County coast, at 12:57 p.m. Sunday. The target warhead had been launched minutes earlier from an atoll in the Marshall Islands, 4,900 miles away. The interception occurred outside Earth's atmosphere.

The GMD system is intended to protect the United States from attack by an adversary with a limited arsenal of long-range missiles, such as North Korea or Iran. The rocket-interceptors — four at Vandenberg and 26 at Ft. Greely, Alaska — are designed to crash into and destroy an incoming warhead in space, as it begins its descent toward Earth.

The system's roots go back to the Strategic Defense Initiative, the President Reagan-era program to develop a ground- and space-based missile shield that would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." No such system was ever deployed, but efforts to develop a more-limited missile defense continued.

In 2002, President George W. Bush ordered a ground-based system deployed by 2004.

As the Los Angeles Times reported June 15, the hurried deployment and subsequent expansion of GMD denied engineers time to resolve myriad technical problems.

Repeated difficulties emerged with the interceptors' 5-foot-long kill vehicles, which, once boosted into space, rely on a heat-seeking sensor and other complex technology to pursue and destroy an enemy warhead.

The interceptors were essentially prototypes when deployed in 2004. The first model of kill vehicle was not flight-tested against a mock warhead until September 2006 — two years after the vehicles had been placed in silos.

Because each of the kill vehicles is handmade, no two are identical. A fix that works with one might not solve problems with others. The piecemeal approach has left the system short of spare parts for crucial components.

After a director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, slowed expansion of the system in 2009 in order to spend more money resolving its technical malfunctions, he was overruled by then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, The Times reported.

Despite GMD's problems, influential members of Congress have protected its funding and are pushing to add silos and interceptors in the Eastern U.S. at a potential cost of billions of dollars.

Boeing Co. manages the system for the Pentagon. Raytheon Co. manufactures the kill vehicles. Thousands of jobs in five states, mostly in Alabama and Arizona, depend directly or indirectly on the program.

Riki Ellison, founder and chairman of Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a group that lobbies for missile defense spending, has attributed GMD's past test failures and reliability problems to decisions by the Obama administration and O'Reilly, who was appointed by Bush and served as the missile agency director from 2008 to late 2012.

In an interview after Sunday's test, Ellison said the system needs a more effective, redesigned kill vehicle that could receive updated information about a target's location until the moment of impact.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said that regardless of the outcome of Sunday's test, GMD needs an overhaul.

Weighing it against other military programs that are facing cuts, Sanchez said she did not see the justification for expanding the GMD system, as the Obama administration plans to do by placing 14 additional interceptors at Ft. Greely by late 2017.

"They don't work right now," Sanchez said. "I would prefer to put something out that works."

david.willman@latimes.com